Explore "Patria (Sonnets)" by Henry Van Dyke on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
I would not even ask my heart to say / If I could love another land as well / As thee, my country, had I felt the spell / Of Italy at birth, or learned to obey / The charm of France, or England's mighty sway.
I would not be so much an infidel / As once to dream, or fashion words to tell, / What land could hold my heart from thee away.
For like a law of nature in my blood, / America, I feel thy sovereignty, / And woven through my soul thy vital sign.
My life is but a wave and thou the flood; / I am a leaf and thou the mother-tree; / Nor should I be at all, were I not thine.
June, 1904.